Keysight Technologies, Inc. announced it has participated in the second global Plugfest event organized by the O-RAN Alliance to accelerate the readiness of multi-vendor O-RAN compliant network infrastructure.

Keysight contributed to the event, held at multiple sites between July 27 and September 25, with a wide range of 5G radio access network (RAN), 5G core (5GC) and 5G new radio (NR) air interface test solutions. Keysight's 5G hardware and software platforms were used by ten vendors of O-RAN compliant radio units (O-RUs), distributed units (O-DUs) and centralized units (O-CUs) at the TIM Innovation Labs in Torino, Italy, operated by TIM, Italy's largest mobile operator. The goal was to verify more than forty-three test cases specified by Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and the O-RAN Alliance.

"We're pleased to work with TIM to verify interoperability between O-RUs, O-DUs and O-CUs and conformance of these network elements to the latest O-RAN specifications," said Giampaolo Tardioli, vice president and general manager for Keysight's network access business. "Keysight's end-to-end performance test approach supports network and core infrastructure vendors, such as base station manufacturers and makers of small cells and O-RUs."

The results of the event underscore the readiness of the O-RAN standard. The acceleration in the development and deployment of open, interoperable, disaggregated and standards-based solutions is growing the number of O-RAN vendors, which is expanding demand for Keysight's integrated test solution portfolio. As editor of O-RAN fronthaul conformance test specifications, Keysight is enabling a broad ecosystem to offer innovative solutions to mobile operators who want to create a multi-vendor environment for agile delivery of 5G services.

The following Keysight 5G solutions contributed to the success of the event:

  • Open RAN Studio for O-RU conformance validation
  • UeSIM user equipment emulation solution for validating O-RAN compliant infrastructure
  • CoreSIM simulates 5GC to test control and user planes of O-RAN compliant 5G base stations
  • Vision Edge 100 Network packet broker for end-to-end visibility into physical, virtual, SDN and NFV networks
  • RuSIM for end-to-end performance validation of the RAN by emulating real network traffic over the O-RAN fronthaul interface
  • Nemo Outdoor for verifying 5G end-user experience after integrating O-RAN network elements
  • PathWave Signal Generation and Playback Software (Signal Studio) for waveform creation and characterization and testing of transmitters and receivers in base stations and wireless devices
  • PathWave 89600 Vector Signal Analysis for advanced demodulation and vector signal analysis